The sole ill

Not to put to fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

-- They Might Be Giants

I recently posted on how the Sun -- the 19th trump -- foretells the birdemic (a discovery for which all credit goes to Richard Arrowsmith).

Today I noticed the French name of the card: Le Soleil. Le, of course, means "the." Add a space, double the final letter, and you have the sole ill.

How appropriate!

At one level, the birdemic is an illness which is being fought by enforcing solitude -- quarantines, social distancing, solitary confinement -- and those unfortunate enough to die of it die alone, with no visitors in the hospital and no mourners at the grave.

At a level both deeper and more literal, though, institutions around the world have all decided to treat the birdemic as the sole ill -- the only problem -- to the defeat of which all else must be subordinated. No trade-offs need be considered, because no sacrifice is too great if it means saving even one life from the world's one sole ill. As Bruce Charlton recently put it in one of his best posts ever,

If the cost of ridding our world of an invisible rabid-leper-zombies is that most people (including me) are killed by the measures ostensibly taken to rid the world of invisible rabid-leper-zombies - then That is a price worth paying... We can, at least, then look forward to the a birdemic-free-world! A world finally free of fear...

Look again at the Tarot de Marseille card. At the bottom we see two people making contact with each other, labeled "the sole ill." This -- human contect -- is what must be stamped out. At the top is the coronaform Sun, labeled with the number 19, looking down on the world -- which from now on revolves around it. The birdemic is from now on to be, like Chairman Mao, the reddest red sun in our hearts, the only bee in our bonnets. Unless of course it's climate change (represented by the blazing Sun and by carbon dioxide rising into the atmosphere like raindrops in reverse) or racism (two people who look alike daring to be friends!). The exact nature of the sole ill may change from time to time, but the basic situation -- one sole evil, to which all else is to be subordinated -- remains the same.

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Note added: We can take this double-the-l thing a step further. If a world revolving around le soleil is heliocentric, one revolving around the sole ill is -- that's right, hell-iocentric.